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Martin Marten: Seeking the Goodness in all Life

“Brian Doyle’s gorgeous new novel is a hypnotic, luxurious journey through our natural world–a mind-bending celebration of how sweet each day can be.”

~ Carol Cassella

I wanted to wait until spring to share this Blog post, but this utterly spell-binding story begged me to shout out: Urge everyone you know to read Martin Marten! This luminous tale features two protagonists, one a 14 year old boy and the other a young marten (a carnivore between fisher and a weasel), living on Mt. Hood. This is a book about community on a mountaintop. Community means all creatures, not just humans. It’s a story about the natural world and a place and sense of being we should all strive to attain.

Each chapter reveals human and the natural world stories, and then weaves them together in a stitch so tight, it becomes impossible to separate the two. In addition to being the perfect portrait of Community and Land Stewardship, the sweetest scent of Martin Marten is that every human and every creature we meet are good. Author Brian Doyle simply focuses on the positive attributes of humans and wild animals and portrays a persuasive model on how we all can find a way to respect each other with mutual regard.

While ideally read without distractions, without Iphone pings or in a crowded space, regardless of your reading environment, you may be transported into the book’s reverent space, where you feel like you are in the midst of a beautiful poem…the words flow like a bubbling clear stream.

Come April and May, the Hood River Reads program will be promoting Martin Marten through a series of presentations by the author and (a wildlife biologist I know), including an outdoor tour to Martin Marten’s natural home on Saturday, May 21.

“Could it be that moments like that are why we invented religions and dream of peace in the bruised world and write books and music, trying to find the right sounds and stories for the thing we know but cannot say?…Is this why we write and read, in the end, in order to find new words for the things we feel but do not have words for?”